In many computer systems, there is often a restricted class of users (e.g., root users) that have read and write access (e.g., root access) to the computer systems. Indeed, root users are often the overall administrators of a computer system. As such, root users often have a large number of responsibilities that prevent them from being able to efficiently perform everyday tasks (e.g., managing websites, adding new users, etc.) on the machines of the computer system. In order to increase efficiency, these users must delegate their root access to other users.
Likewise, there may be non-root users that are authorized to perform certain tasks, not requiring root access, on a computer system. These non-root users may delegate their authorization to other users for performing these certain tasks. For example, a database user (dbuser) authorized to perform tasks on a database may delegate its database authorization to another user. Whether delegated root access by a root user or delegated authorization to perform certain tasks by another non-root user, a user needs to be able to determine what levels of access or authorization have been delegated to the user. In other words, the user needs to be able to determine the user's security relationship information.
In order to determine and display the user's security relationship information, prior art graphical user interfaces (“GUIs”) used to access prior art computer systems generally have to know which of a plurality of software components maintain the security relationship information. Furthermore, in prior art systems the GUI callback code may need to be coded to perform a substantial number of functions, such as method invocations, class instantiations and other processes, in order to access these software components. Consequently, such prior art GUIs are cluttered with a significant amount of code necessary to perform these functions. Moreover, the software components must be able to be accessed by the GUI, adding to the complexity of the software components.